Hydraulic fracturing (“frocking”) is an oil and gas extraction technique that has seen an extraordinary increase in use during the last decade. Dining frocking, underground rock is fractured through the introduction of a highly-pressurized mixture of water, chemicals, and sand. The oil and gas within the rock is then released to the ground through the rock fractures. With the increased use of frocking methods to extract oil and gas, concern over how fracking affects the surrounding environment has increased as well. Such concern has led to federal, state, and local regulatory efforts to stein the release of emissions from production facility sites. For example, oil and gas operators may be fined for visible emissions, aka black smoke, emitted from an emission control device.
In the year 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated rules requiring routine visible inspection of flare sites for “visible emissions”. Since that time, oil and gas companies have struggled to comply with these rules, due to the nature of the industry—namely, many well sites are located in remote, difficult-to-reach locations. Currently, the only visible emission detection process used by oil and gas operators comprises employing visual inspection of well sites.
Oil and gas companies need an efficient solution to monitor remote well sites, and other new and inventive improvements.